The Paperless Office

Recycling paper is one of the biggest parts of going green as it means cutting down fewer trees resulting in more oxygen and less carbon dioxide and so less heat trapped in our planet. All of this is highly important if you want to do your bit toward going green, and by the same token it is important that you also use paper that has been made from recycled material.

However while this is certainly a good step to take, there is one better that you can go – and that’s to avoid using paper in the first place as much as possible. To achieve this is an aim that many businesses hold, and something that anyone interested in going green to consider. Not only is this great for going green though, but also for saving space, and for making things easier to find. But how could you achieve it?

The simple answer is to use new technology to replace paper wherever possible, and there are several ways you can start doing that right now. Here we will look at some ways to do this.

Ask for Digital: Digital bank statements are a great example of taking one step closer to a digital office. Ring up your bank and ask them to give you digital bank statements from now on and that will mean that you download your statements as a PDF or simply view them on the bank’s website rather than getting them in the post. This is perfect because it means they are more up-to-date, they don’t take up as much space, and they are more easy to flick through when you want to find a specific date.

You can similarly request digital copies of other information when going green. One easy way to do this is to make sure that you give an e-mail address and not a postal address when filling out forms. Meanwhile use digital e-books and PDFs instead of documents and search for any documentation you need online. Ask for job applications as e-mails and only put your e-mail on your website.

Send Digital: Anything you send, choose e-mail as your format if you’re going green and this will save you on supplies and postage too. Things like wage slips for instance can be sent digitally as can invoices and newsletters etc.

Convert to Digital: If you have papers that you need in paper form then simply scan them in destroy the originals and now you have digital copies instead.

Organize and Back Up: For this to work though you need to be highly organized and you need to know where all the files are stored and be able to retrieve them quickly and easily. At the same time be sure to back up this data on external devices or online to ensure you never lose the information.